The most gruesome situation you've encountered?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

During Army Reserve weekend warrior days we went to the children's hospital burn unit. It was a regional center. One lady 'Lois', fell asleep smoking on her wedding night (her new husband burned to death). Burns over 90% of her body. Finger tips and toes were exposed bone. Skull was bare of skin, with screws holding her skull together. They cut skin from under her one remaining breast (the other was burned off) to fashion crude eyelids to protect her eyeballs. She made Frankenstein look like a Hollywood star. It took 5 of us to get her into the tub of bleach water, so she could have the dead skin scrubbed off. She took enough morphine to kill a platoon, yet her screams could still be heard on the floor below. That said- that pales in comparison to the child abuse cases, which are just about...unspeakable. They told us that on average, nurses only lasted two months on that floor.

One slow day at work, I was flipping through the pages of one of our doctor's textbook on trauma medical care in combat zones.

I work in trauma, and what I saw pictured in that book showing injuries from explosions and such was way beyond what we see here at work. Most of our patients though injured, are in one piece.

We do trauma, what I saw in that book was true carnage.

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Specializes in NICU.
Hard to say. While on active duty I saw hundreds of people with wounds caused by explosives. That combined with the effects of heat and swarms of flies... Ugh. Also saw a court yard of gas filled bloated bodies that a number of tanks and APCs had driven through and the treads created a stew of rotton body parts, mud, blood and maggots. I had to wade through, several times, it with the heel of my boot shot off.

...

PMFB-RN, thank you for your service.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
One slow day at work, I was flipping through the pages of one of our doctor's textbook on trauma medical care in combat zones.

I work in trauma, and what I saw pictured in that book showing injuries from explosions and such was way beyond what we see here at work. Most of our patients though injured, are in one piece.

We do trauma, what I saw in that book was true carnage.

*** Ya, not much compairs to trauma created by explosives.

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Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.

Back in the mid-90's my company was deployed to Bosnia. Our mission was to provide security to UN investigators who were looking for evidence of war crimes. One day the UN geeks were digging up a mass grave. It wasn't that bad from a rotten stench point of view but when a Swedish UN guy explained to me what I was seeing I was nearly threw up on the spot. Seems in the old communist health system materity hospitals were seperate from regular hospitals. The Serbs had rounded up all the patients in a materity hospital, women in advanced stages of pregnancy, new moms, and tiny babies. They dug a trench with a bull dozer, lined the young women (babies in their arms) and walked down the line hitting each woman in the back of the head with a hammer. They didn't usually bother to kill the little babies, just pushed them into the pit with their moms. Each woman's skull had a neat hole in the back of it about the size of a US 50 cent piece. Later that day I was leaning aginst a tree smoking and joking with my buddies and this UN guy walks up and tells us to stop leaning aginst the tree. I was about to tell him to go to hell when he said "no wait, it's evidence don't you see?" He pointed to several tiny little black stubs imbedded into the bark. Apperently the Serbs couldn't be bothered shooting the toddlers but would grab them by the feet and swing them aginst this tree and bash their head in before throwing them into the pit too. The little black stubs were baby teeth imbedded into the tree.

To this day when I hear the work "Serbian" I have the same reaction most people have to the word "Hitler". Keeps we awake sometimes.

Our rules of engagment were strict. We couldn't shoot anyone until they shot at us first. The Serbs quickly figured this out and would point their guns at us as we drove past. After some of the things the company saw there was some breakdown in fire disipline. We would see armed Serbs and sometimes light them up weather they shot at us or not. If they didnt' it would be like "Hey Smith did you hear him shoot?" Smith: "Ya I heard the shot, how about you Jones?" Jones would of course agree to having heard a shot and so on until you had 20 guys claiming they heard a shot. Our officers knew what was going on but let it slide.

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Specializes in ED.
I don't know about you guys - but that kid from Louisville breaking his leg the other day just about made me puke..........

I saw the footage, and I'm probably a terrible person, because I'm a UK fan and all I could think was , "Less competition next year!"

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Specializes in Med-Surg.
Back in the mid-90's my company was deployed to Bosnia. Our mission was to provide security to UN investigators who were looking for evidence of war crimes. One day the UN geeks were digging up a mass grave. It wasn't that bad from a rotten stench point of view but when a Swedish UN guy explained to me what I was seeing I was nearly threw up on the spot. Seems in the old communist health system materity hospitals were seperate from regular hospitals. The Serbs had rounded up all the patients in a materity hospital, women in advanced stages of pregnancy, new moms, and tiny babies. They dug a trench with a bull dozer, lined the young women (babies in their arms) and walked down the line hitting each woman in the back of the head with a hammer. They didn't usually bother to kill the little babies, just pushed them into the pit with their moms. Each woman's skull had a neat hole in the back of it about the size of a US 50 cent piece. Later that day I was leaning aginst a tree smoking and joking with my buddies and this UN guy walks up and tells us to stop leaning aginst the tree. I was about to tell him to go to hell when he said "no wait, it's evidence don't you see?" He pointed to several tiny little black stubs imbedded into the bark. Apperently the Serbs couldn't be bothered shooting the toddlers but would grab them by the feet and swing them aginst this tree and bash their head in before throwing them into the pit too. The little black stubs were baby teeth imbedded into the tree.

To this day when I hear the work "Serbian" I have the same reaction most people have to the word "Hitler". Keeps we awake sometimes.

Our rules of engagment were strict. We couldn't shoot anyone until they shot at us first. The Serbs quickly figured this out and would point their guns at us as we drove past. After some of the things the company saw there was some breakdown in fire disipline. We would see armed Serbs and sometimes light them up weather they shot at us or not. If they didnt' it would be like "Hey Smith did you hear him shoot?" Smith: "Ya I heard the shot, how about you Jones?" Jones would of course agree to having heard a shot and so on until you had 20 guys claiming they heard a shot. Our officers knew what was going on but let it slide.

Oh my God....this made me nauseous, so sad, and made me want to run home and hug MY toddler....bless you for your service and what you had to see and do. I couldn't have made it with my sanity, that's for sure...

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For those of you looking up the video on the ball player: if this fascinates you look up Joe Theissman injury on Youtube. The original D*** moment in NFL history.

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I started in PICU, moved to step-down but still share the unit. I cannot describe all the gruesome stuff I have seen without most of it breaking HIPAA. Although it won't win any contests I did have a really cool thing I had to do: leech therapy. A patient had the last joint of their finger pinched off. They reattached the finger with a pin sticking out of the top of the attached digit, reminded me of those people that keep collections of bugs pinned to foam cubes. We had to attach a leech to the top of the severed digit quite often. The leech was taken out of the solution and we had to hold the head of the leech just right and try to entice it to attach. It wanted to go for the bottom part of the digit, not the blood deprived top part, but finally they would attach. They would then get fat with blood, in the process pulling blood into the digit and keeping it from clotting through leech saliva. When they got full they would just drop off and wiggle away. We wrapped the patient's hand in curlex and put a med cup on top of the digit with the leech on it but they would let go and dig through the curlex. Once a leech got out the door and was going down the hall. It left a trail of blood behind it. I have seen this done twice and both times it worked and the fingers were saved. It was kinda fun attaching them and one RN was pregnant and begged me to do it when she had that patient that night because she felt like throwing up.

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Specializes in Operating Room.

Necrotizing fasciiitis on several occasions. One time, they called us up to the ICU to amputate the pts hand at the bedside.

More open fractures than you could shake a stick at..my brother was horrified that I could watch that clip of the guy breaking his leg and still eat dinner.

Hands cut off, fingers cut off, one poor guy missing a face, and another guy who got squished by a press at a factory.

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Specializes in Operating Room.
Back in the mid-90's my company was deployed to Bosnia. Our mission was to provide security to UN investigators who were looking for evidence of war crimes. One day the UN geeks were digging up a mass grave. It wasn't that bad from a rotten stench point of view but when a Swedish UN guy explained to me what I was seeing I was nearly threw up on the spot. Seems in the old communist health system materity hospitals were seperate from regular hospitals. The Serbs had rounded up all the patients in a materity hospital, women in advanced stages of pregnancy, new moms, and tiny babies. They dug a trench with a bull dozer, lined the young women (babies in their arms) and walked down the line hitting each woman in the back of the head with a hammer. They didn't usually bother to kill the little babies, just pushed them into the pit with their moms. Each woman's skull had a neat hole in the back of it about the size of a US 50 cent piece. Later that day I was leaning aginst a tree smoking and joking with my buddies and this UN guy walks up and tells us to stop leaning aginst the tree. I was about to tell him to go to hell when he said "no wait, it's evidence don't you see?" He pointed to several tiny little black stubs imbedded into the bark. Apperently the Serbs couldn't be bothered shooting the toddlers but would grab them by the feet and swing them aginst this tree and bash their head in before throwing them into the pit too. The little black stubs were baby teeth imbedded into the tree.

To this day when I hear the work "Serbian" I have the same reaction most people have to the word "Hitler". Keeps we awake sometimes.

Our rules of engagment were strict. We couldn't shoot anyone until they shot at us first. The Serbs quickly figured this out and would point their guns at us as we drove past. After some of the things the company saw there was some breakdown in fire disipline. We would see armed Serbs and sometimes light them up weather they shot at us or not. If they didnt' it would be like "Hey Smith did you hear him shoot?" Smith: "Ya I heard the shot, how about you Jones?" Jones would of course agree to having heard a shot and so on until you had 20 guys claiming they heard a shot. Our officers knew what was going on but let it slide.

I can handle accidental injuries just fine( except when it's little ones). But, my brain and my heart cannot stomach deliberate cruelty and torture. I think I'd be in a mental health facility if I saw that. Shoot, just reading it has me depressed.

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For me it was a baby on ECMO, a slightly older machine than we have now, and the roller-head burst...I believe they had to completely repaint the room and replace the tiles in the ceiling after the blood bath and everyone involved had to throw out their clothes/shoes. The baby did not survive :cry:

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I'm a student and I work as an aide in a PCU - worst I saw was a gentleman with systemic Steven-Johnson's system due to a reaction from chemotherapy...he went blind and was trached - he sloughed just about every inch of his skin - including his member and scrotum...it took 3 nurses, and 3 aides all in plastic isolation gowns an hour and a half to do dressing changes...

the idiots in the lab put tape on him a few times after pulling labs...they stopped when we showed them the 4 inches of skin that pulled off with the tape....

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